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| Kandovan, a cave village south of Tabriz |
Tabriz is a desert city, formerly a
major stopping point on the ancient Silk Road, and today an industrial city
framed by rocky red mountains. People
here speak Turkish as their primary language, though most speak Farsi as
well. There is an incredible amount of new
construction, mostly of housing. New
cities are being built, complete with huge apartment blocks, shopping areas,
schools, parks and clinics. But, there
are also still the old mud brick sections of the city, with narrow, windy
streets, that remind everyone of its past.
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| interior archway of Blue Mosque |
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| Tabriz bazaar gold section |
Tabriz has a very large bazaar listed as a UNESCO World
Heritage Site. Like most Middle Eastern
bazaars, the shops are tiny and organized in sections—gold jewelry shops in a
long line along one alleyway, carpet shops in larger spaces surrounding a
courtyard, an endless variety of inexpensive clothes and household goods in
their particular areas. People come to
the bazaar expecting to get cheap goods. As everywhere, people stopped us to ask where we were from. Don bored some women with videos of his new granddaughter.
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| Don showing women videos of his granddaughter |
If Iranians want something pricey, they go to one of the new malls. In fact, our hotel, the newest in the city
and very good, is attached to a shiny new mall full of high end shops and
packed with shoppers at 10 p.m. on Thursday night.
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| new high end shopping mall |
The old Blue Mosque is a relic of Tabriz’ glorious
past. It was destroyed by an earthquake
in 1779. The dome and many pillars
continued to stand for another century, but without any attempt at renovation,
the dome, too, collapsed from neglect.
The mosque has been rebuilt and very partially restored, showing the
beauty of its deep blue tiles. It must
have been spectacular in its previous life.
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| ancient wine vessel at Azerbaijan Museum |
Next door is the Azerbaijan Museum, with a wonderful
collection of artifacts dating back 4000 to 5000 years. There is beautiful pottery, alabaster
carvings, obsidian arrowheads and an Iron Age grave. The basement is dedicated to a modern
sculptor whose large and fascinating sculptures depict the miseries of
humankind, all brought on ourselves by ourselves. It is social commentary in a very interesting
form.
We were sightseeing on Friday, the Muslim holy day, so the
city was quiet in the morning, empty of traffic until about noon. We wandered by the Friday Mosque, a
monumental 10 year old complex that is a center of religious and social
activity on Fridays. The Red Crescent
conducts health screenings every Friday to check people for diabetes, heart disease
and other chronic ailments. There are
separate tents for women and men, both very crowded.
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| women waiting for health screening at Friday mosque |
In the afternoon, we drove to Kandovan, a troglodyte village
south of Tabriz. This entire area is
volcanic and, in Kondovan, resulted in a mountainside of inverted volcanic
cones that the local people carved into their homes. While many are still homes today, some have
been turned into shops which are reachable by climbing up steep steps from the
valley below. Local farmers still use
donkeys to haul their produce to the village markets. We stayed in a cave hotel that had some
charm, but not much else to recommend it.
To get to our room, we climbed up about 9 stories of steep steps. Our luggage was hauled up from below in a
wooden box attached to a long rope on a pulley.
We enjoyed the town which, at about 8000 feet above sea level, is cool
right now and downright frigid in the winter. We were quite an oddity to the villagers and Iranian tourists who stopped us to take photos of us and to welcome us to Iran.
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| Kurdish tourists in Kandovan who wanted photo with us |
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| Kandovan donkeys |
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